Maria Crawford, Legal Executive, recalls the fight that many young men took up on the streets of Dublin …

Adjacent to Tracey Solicitors is 16 Westmoreland Street, which was a chemist wholesalers at the time of the rising.

Working there was a young man named Edward Daly. Hailing from Limerick, Daly came from a staunchly republican background, and when he moved to Dublin, he was one of the first to join the Irish Volunteers.

During the fateful Easter weekend, he led the First Battalion as they commandeered the Four Courts. They raided both the Bridewell and Linehall Barracks, and fought the British Army around the streets of Smithfield until eventually surrendering.

Almost immediately after the surrender, British forces began to indiscriminately fire at male civilians in the area. It would be the killing of several of these unarmed citizens that would begin to sway public opinion in favour of the rebels. During the siege, the First Battalion captured a leading member of the British Forces, Col JP Brereton. Upon his release, Brereton commented that he was treated with kindness by his captors. Daly would be shown no such kindness in return. At the age of twenty-five, he was executed at Kilmainham Goal, becoming the youngest of the volunteers to be killed for his part in the rebellion.